Synthetic data has increasingly been in the news in recent years. It is being used for many purposes, such as training artificial intelligence (AI) models, and for more thoroughly testing software. It is also being described as a new type of privacy enhancing technology (PET). In what other ways is synthetic data being used?
Do data protection regulations and other laws and legal requirements apply to synthetic data? E.g. do the associated individuals need to provide consent for organizations to use synthetic data where pieces of their personal data was incorporated? How do the Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) in Europe view synthetic data? As personal data that must be protected under GDPR? Or not?
In the U.S. how about HIPAA? Is synthetic data created using health data, that is defined to be protected health information (PHI), covered by HIPAA?
How can synthetic data be a PET when it is created from actual personal data?
And what about synthetic identity theft? This is a growing problem. How is synthetic data involved with that? Couldn’t this data be used for such crimes?
Is identifiability a risk with synthetic data? Why or why not? What are other types of privacy risks with synthetic data?
How is synthetic data use evolving?
Listen to this discussion to hear answers to these, and many more questions about synthetic data use, risks, and benefits.
The use of synthetic data is increasingly exponentially, so the time to learn more is now! See more about Dr. El Emam at replica-analytics.com.